Professional golfer Roy Kent is all washed up and is about ready to finally hit rock bottom. He’s so drunk all the time that he can barely play the sport which made him famous, and his last chance is to become the resident pro at the Tall Grass Country Club. What Roy doesn’t know is that this particular golf course has a bit of a problem: its members are being stalked and mangled by a rogue lawnmower! Can Roy become an unlikely hero and save the day? No, but he has help in the form of Kelly Lange, a plucky golf instructor and Deke Slade, a former groundskeeper and demolitions expert. Did you know that people can actually play golf professionally?!

Let me get this controversial opinion I have out of the way before I get started so you know where I’m coming from. I have seen the film commonly known as Jaws (1975) and I think it is a good movie. Is anyone still here after that bombshell? Good! Then let’s proceed. Blades is a surprisingly good parody of Jaws that luckily has more to it than just the joke of a lawnmower stalking its prey on a golf course in the place of a shark swimming around a bay and eating and pooping. Why does Jaws have all those shark pooping scenes? Kinda weird if you ask me.

From a story by John P. Finnegan, the writer and director of the gloriously daft Girls School Screamers (1985), this fun oddity has a lot going for it. There’s some decent gore and lots of corny humor that thankfully never goes into your typical 80s boner or boob jokes. I was surprised to see that much of this cast didn’t really go on to do very much but they are all committed to making this silliness work. Cinematographer James Hayman would go to shoot Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and be executive producer of one of the most frightening TV shows ever made, “NCIS: Los Angeles”. Great! Now I’m gonna have nightmares.

Distributed by good old Troma, Blades has been lurking around in the periphery of the sand trap of home video horrors for a while. Luckily, Vinegar Syndrome has reached into the hole and plucked out this film that’s a real ball. What a hole in one they made! Eh, I got nothin’. Anyway, Blades looks and sounds so darn nice on this Blu-ray that it really helped me reevaluate this thing. There’s an audio commentary by director Thomas R. Rondinella and writer William R. Pace as well as a making-of documentary. Both give lots of insight and trivia into how this bonkers movie got made. “This chum bucket is full of golf balls”, he said, closing out his review.